Microsoft to Yahoo: Two Days to Respond or Else! — Sources at Yahoo tell me that Microsoft made its most recent overtures right after Yahoo announced its earnings Tuesday and then told Yahoo execs they had two days to respond or Microsoft would go public with the offer.

Hold Everything! We May Get Another YHOO Bidder! * — A Valley source is hearing that a major private-equity firm was just days away from making its own bid for Yahoo when the Microsoft bomb hit this morning. (The same source now reports that TWO firms were circling, both big New York-based shops).

Flickr Rebellion Brews at Specter of M$ Acquisition — A small but vocal minority on Flickr are already staging online protests at the prospect of a Microsoft takeover. Flickr is one of several popular Web 2.0 websites owned by Yahoo that loyal users fear will suffer under Microsoft ownership.

What Would a Combined Microsoft-Yahoo Look Like? — Microsoft's $31 a share offer for Yahoo is made possible by Yahoo's slumping shares (Yahoo's stock was trading at about $31 a year ago). While Yahoo has rejected Microsoft's entreaties in the past, with Terry Semel stepping down as chairman …

URLs are People, Too — So you've just built a totally sweet new social app and you can't wait for people to start using it, but there's a problem: when people join they don't have any friends on your site. They're lonely, and the experience isn't good because they can't use the app with people they know.

Third undersea Internet cable cut in Mideast — (CNN) — An undersea cable carrying Internet traffic was cut off the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, officials said Friday, the third loss of a line carrying Internet and telephone traffic in three days. — Ships have been dispatched to repair …

MacBook Air 1.6Ghz HDD vs 1.8Ghz SSD Benchmarks — Many readers are reporting shipments and delivery in our MacBook Air forum. First impressions and notes of the MacBook Air are being compiled in this thread. — Few head to head comparisons between the Solid State Drive (SSD) …

Urchin Software Beta Now Public — Today we're happy to announce that the Urchin Software from Google beta is now available for download at urchin.com. Urchin Software from Google is a web analytics product similar in scope to Google Analytics, except you install and manage the software on your own servers.

Decision: Blogs vs. New York Times — February 1st, 02008 by Alexander Rose — Long Bets has arrived at a decision for Long Bet #2 between blogger Dave Winer and Martin Nisenholtz of the NY Times. At stake is US$2000.00 plus half the interest that has accrued over the last 5 years in the Farsight Fund …

Microsoft Is Building a Spaceship Out of Spare Parts — I used to write about bank mergers, and those always struck me as taking two aircraft carriers and building a new one out of the parts. — For Microsoft, trying to build a new Internet portal-search engine-advertising network-cloud computing company …

Microsoft Offers $44.6 Billion for Yahoo … My guess: Sold. That's a big premium over Yahoo's current share price, and I don't see Yahoo getting there on their own any time soon. — Engineering-wise, it's interesting. Yahoo's stuff is almost all written in PHP, and runs on FreeBSD and Red Hat Linux servers.

Is Twitter the Tech Version of Britney Spears? — We all know that as Britney Spears continues to fall further and further down and it seems the further down she falls, the more people watch her, write about her and photograph her. In fact, the Fox news here in NYC (#1 market) …

Two videos of E-Lead's Noahpad in action — If our description from CES of the perplexing (and frankly inconvenient) navigation associated with E-Lead's Noahpad wasn't enough to truly depict what is going on with this thing, then perhaps these videos will help.